Lithium–air battery, they could make electric cars practical.

Skepticism is good if applied equally to both sides of a discussion, otherwise you are just swallowing one side’s line instead of the other. I’m optimistic about our ability to solve problems but less so about our inclination to implement those solutions.

I am surprised that your response to a decrease in investigative journalism is “I won’t go into that here either”.

The * you wrote in itself deserves to be reported on more thoroughly and investigated. Is it little wonder that Snowden was forced to flee the country for his revelations of what the NSA is doing?

The Washington Post who printed and then won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on Snowden’s revelations has now written in an editorial calling for his prosecution. What a sham. :frowning:

Well said RDB :+1: I’m a skeptic at heart but I can be convinced and learn. The one thing I can’t do is be led which is the proof-mark of a true skeptic :sunglasses: Only the led can be misled, so never follow anybody but yourself and be smart enough to be someone worth following :wink:

I’d love to see a cell/battery technology come along making home power generation easy, practical, safe, and cheap. So far we’ve got winners in each category but not all of them together, and without having them all you don’t yet have enough. Let’s keep looking though- skeptic or not I’d like to see it happen!

Phil

I think there will always be safety concerns but safer is better than not. More and more people are installing home generator systems and accidents do happen regardless of where the juice comes from. I would nust like to see as much attention paid to the costs and hazards of each rather than nickel and diming alternative energy while giving fossil fuels a free pass on so many collateral costs that don’t show up at the pump. A few years ago a natural gas pipeline through San Bruno blew an entire neighborhood killing several people. Safety already has more to do with conscientious maintenance and responsibility than hardware. I’d have no problem whatsoever with solar, a power wall, and a small hybrid truck (if I could find one) even with current technology. I’ve had my truck for 15 years and in that time put 260,000 miles on it with an average fuel cost of at least $3000 per year for a total of more than $45,000. Most of that time the cost of fuel was closer to $3.50 per gallon than $3(sometimes over $4)and the stuff inevitably costs more tomorrow than today. If it takes hybrid technology to span the mileage gap for a generation of vehicles then will somebody please build it into a small truck?

The problem in Journalism to day is that it doesn’t pay to do it. The papers face ever decreasing circulation and income, and organizations like Fox News have conclusively demonstrated that you can make much more without doing any research (that costs money). Fox News is part of the entertainment division! In this day and age, if there isn’t any money in it, it isn’t going to happen. That’s the basic problem with Journalism in this country now. There is no longer any money to be made by actually doing work and attempting to present a fair and accurate picture. Unfortunately the Business model for newspaper Journalism is now broken, and probably not repairable, the short term solution is that anything that costs money (like respectable journalists) gets shown the door, so the problem gets worse until the paper news media eventually goes bust. YMMV

The current weight of a Tesla Model S with a 85kWh battery weighs 1200 lb or 544kg and this is just the weight of the battery packs.

Development has to be in more reduction of current battery weight, and especially if used in a truck carrying cargo.

GM actually did build a Chevrolet hybrid pick-up truck. The production was extremely limited and it received so little PR and notice that you’d think it was a secret! I have a friend who actually owns one. He had to travel 500 miles to find one at a dealer! IIRC it is 2013.

There is not much to argue about what you have written; current journalism is being kept in check with a justification that it must be profitable.

There was good cause that the U.S. has as its First Amendment in the Constitution that calls for freedom of speech and the press; it was not ever written that must be profitable.

We live on a planet with limited resources; the idea of an expanding economy without this understanding these limits is an economy moving towards a collapse. A good reading of world history both by the written word and the natural sciences will show that collapse has not been a novel event.

We are now living in the Holocene after just leaving the Cretaceous Period. One of the biggest problems we face as a species is hubris.

Too true and we affect much more than control the world around us even at the same time as we deny the effects while assuming control.

Consider the source.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Christopher Booker:

He seems fond of hyperbole and given the topics he discusses even more fond of notoriety than truth. A relative on my mothers side of the family was a college journalism professor with a student named Dan Rather, that professor was dismayed at Rather’s emphasis on selling a story instead of telling it. More recent but still old news was the 60 minutes expose on Marin county and it’s culture along with later interviews of some of the people portrayed along with raw footage. It was readily apparent that the 60 minutes team did not investigate but instead scripted a show then recorded sound bites to validate the script, editing as needed to convey what was desired for the script rather than what was actually said. It’s an entertaining show but it’s been decades now since I’ve been able to trust their integrity.

My point was tongue in cheek in regard to the “when you don’t like the facts” comment :slight_smile:

Don’t know much about the author of the article – don’t much care, he could well think that all politicians are really space aliens in human disguise – it was just a link to a story that was far from fiction, there was much fiddling with data by a group of scientists etc,who should know better, it was reported on by many trusted and reliable sources and did untold damage to the the climate change movement.
But I’m of much the same option as Davidef in regard to being sceptical. There is far to much fiddling of data, half truths, vested intrests etc from both sides, all it achieves is people become sceptical, swith off and just think it’s far easier to just carry on the way they always have, as it’s often easier to live with the lies you already have, than to deal with some new ones from someone else

Often the stuff that comes from the climate change movement is no better than that that comes from the fossil fuel movement, it’s just a hipper kind of rap

For the people that distrust all data, try this thought experiment. Would you go to bed with the exhaust of your car pumping into your bedroom? Hell no. But our planet is a closed system. There’s 1.2 billion cars being driven and that’s probably nothing compared to the coal power plants and trade ships. I read somewhere that the ships that move goods internationally (like china to US) use more fuel per day than all the cars. How the heck do you not want to sleep in exhaust but are ok with pumping it into the atmosphere at rates you can’t even imagine? It’s even in your bedroom as you sleep, for real! Perhaps the problem is just too big for some imaginations.

Well, our planet is a closed system - and all the plants clean the air. Some do a better job of it than others. And of course, some areas of the world have a higher plants-to-environmental-toxins ratio than others. My bedroom has no plants at all. In fact my house doesn’t have any at all. I’d like to have a few for air purification and oxygen production, but we’re too lazy to properly care for them. Just the truth. I have no excuse.

At least until we kill the plants. Try looking up the rate of deforestation. A closed system to stay stable has to be in equilibrium. Generating CO2 while at the same time removing the forests and jungles that convert it back to carbon and oxygen is pushing on one side of the system only.

RBD is right, cleaners are decreasing as the need for them is increasing.
And don’t be fooled into thinking your house is a closed system, it sure isn’t. Air is exchanged through mysterious leaks at an alarming rate - I discovered this when I couldn’t figure out why the big ass humidifier I bought seemed to have the opposite effect on my house. I read and learned how ridiculously large your humidifier really needs to be to keep up with all the dry air leaking in during the winter. And that house was just 10 years old and ‘well sealed’. But wind creates a push/suck effect on the opposite walls and really exchanges air fast even when you can’t find a draft.

Fossil fuels take hundreds of millions of years to develop, and yet the human population has used up nearly half of that in less than 300 years.

Our species has been in existence for about 150,000 years and it took until 1804 to reach One Billion people. Today the world’s population 2016 is 7.4 Billion.

The last major extinction happened 65 million years ago wiping the Dinosaurs, and giving mammals, like ourselves, a new chance to evolve under a new paradigm.

When you view periodic climate variation over Deep Time there is nothing in the record of history that can compare to the changes the human population has brought upon not only itself, but the entire Eco-System of Earth itself in less than 500 years.

When running toward the edge of a cliff there is no problem until the end.

I don’t think anyone said they don’t trust data, I personally do trust data, if it’s true and proven on a balance of probabilities to be so, do you blindly trust all data.
Anyway not sure how having exhaust gases in a bedroom, makes altering statistics/data - lying - to make a case for or against something any more true.

But I do know moving goods in those humongous container ships is an incredible efficient way of moving goods, far far more efficient per litre of fuel consumed than any other method of transporting them.
Although if we all on blf stopped buying flashlights, I’m sure they could reduce the number of container ships needed :wink:

But as I said before, i think it’s great that there are people on here and all over the world who want things to be more green and ive got nothing against going green if it’s a benefit and not worse than what is replacing,which does happen especially if it’s dreamed up by green fanatic types and I’m sure we have all come across people/projects like that, we have one locally that some green politician thought was a good idea - and ‘found’ some data to back it’s implementation - but increase the pollution 10 fold and caused chaos.

But you completely missed my point, we have established fossil fuel use , if that’s going to change people need to be able to have faith and trust in people trying to sell them something else, something unknown.
So those people selling it need to be seen to be whiter than white

Let’s put it another way, you quote for a contract with a company who already has an established supplier, they are not very happy with that supplier they are outdated, inefficient and they lie, so they want something new and better, so you step in with your supply company you promise them the earth excuse the pun something new, efficient, so they are thinking of changing over to you as their new supplier, but then they discover you bent the truth and moved a few figures, not much, but a little just to help your chances, suddenly from thinking we’ll use your company , now they are having serious second thoughts and thinking hey this guy bent the truth,fudged the figures, can we really trust his company, we don’t really trust out original supply company but maybe we should stick with them as despite their faults we are sort of comfortable with they and we know all their faults and flaws already ,so maybe it’s better the devil we know, than someone we don’t.

And people are often just like that, even a small bit of distrust when contemplating something new - even if in all other respect it’s amazing - , makes them want to resist the change and keep the status quo

To me it’s simple if something is good and true then it can stand on its own merit and will have the data to back it, there is never an excuse or need to lie no matter how good the intention.

Anyway I’m off to plug in my electric car so it charges from the solar panels when the sun comes up in a few hours :slight_smile:

No I genuinely am :slight_smile:

Good post, I agree.

Good point! :wink: So… there’s definitely room to improve the way we treat our home planet. Given.